Circumcision and Baptism Similarities

The previous post looked at the broad outline of the history of the church. The story of the church is the story of God's promise to be the God of his people, referred to as God's covenant people. From the time of the first humans, God bound himself to his people. God introduced through Abraham the special rite of circumcision that signified belonging to God. Along with belonging to God, circumcision signified:

• Salvation by faith. The Apostle Paul in Romans tells us that Abraham received the sign of circumcision that was a seal his righteousness obtained through faith.
• Inner Cleansing. In the Old Testament circumcision is portrayed as a cutting away of sin, resulting in a purified life.
• Death of the past and new life for the future. Circumcision was applied to the Israelites as the left Egypt to show their death to their past life of slavery and new life for the Promised Land.
• Union with Christ. Jeremiah says to "circumcise yourselves to the LORD". In doing this, the Israelites were uniting with Christ.
• Regeneration. Paul says in Romans that circumcision represented an act of regeneration by Spirit of God in the heart.
• Sign of belonging to God's visible covenant community. Circumcision was applied to all who participated in the life of God's visible covenant community. Not only was circumcision to be applied to Israelite families, but to the foreigner and strangers who come to the covenant community and wish to join it.
• Applied to the household. Circumcision was applied to the males of the whole household. Infants, at eight days, were circumcised.

There are many questions that could be asked about circumcision. One question is if circumcision was a sign of salvation by faith, why was it applied to infants?

Circumcision shows how salvation is at the initiative of God. Before the infant can make a decisive choice one way or another, God extends his covenant blessing and promise to the family and to the infant. Circumcision was not an act on the part of the infant, or the adult for that matter, to show their devotion to God. Rather, circumcision is an act by God showing the infant, and whoever takes on circumcision, that God has included that person into God's covenant family. No one is automatically or magically saved in circumcision. Salvation in Old Testament times was by God's grace through faith. That faith, if not ever present, would mean that person is forever lost, even if he was a circumcised man.

An important thing to note is that whatever is signified by circumcision is also signified by baptism.

Church Timeline

Inside the Protestant Christian communities there are many debates, one of the debates is when the sacrament (or ordinance) of baptism may be applied to the children of Christian parents. One side believes that baptism should only be applied to those who profess faith in Christ. I shall refer to those who hold that viewpoint as credobaptists (where credo comes from the Latin meaning "I believe"). I use the term paedobaptist (from the Greek pais meaning "child") to those who hold to the view that Bible teaches that children, including infants, of believing parents should be baptized.

To start the series, we will look at the big picture of church history. The word "church" refers to the visible community of God's people throughout the ages. There is an important distinction in the concept of God's community -- the visible and invisible community of God's people. The invisible community are those who have true faith in God. Because we cannot see into the heart of a person, we cannot identify with absolute certainty who is in the community of God and who is not. This aspect of not being able to see the heart of a person, that only God sees the heart, is what makes this class of people invisible to use. The visible community of God are all those who publicly profess faith in God and visibly attach themselves to the visible community of God in operation where they live.

As we look with the broadest brush strokes of church history, we see the church began with Adam and Eve, the first humans. As we develop the timeline, Abraham is recognized as a special recipient of God's promised blessing. Abraham and his male decedents were to receive the sign of belonging to God, circumcision. Later, Moses was instructed by God to teach the Children of Israel that they were not only to practice circumcision on all converts and newborn children in the homes of God's community of people, but also to celebrate the ceremonial dinner of Passover.

Jesus Christ ushers in the new phase in God's community. Christ replaced Passover with the Lord's Supper and replaced circumcision with baptism. In this transition of the community, a remnant of faithful Jews along with a huge in grafting of non-Jewish (Gentile) believers now comprises the visible community of God, or the church.

This broad view of the history of God's visible community of people, the church, is where we begin examining the issue of baptism.

Baptism Series

Today I taught a class for prospective elders and deacons in my church on the Presbyterian view of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Some of the questions reminded me when I was first investigating infant baptism. I had grown up in a church and denomination that permitted both infant baptism and believers baptism. For those of us who believed in "credo baptism" we had the option to dedicate our babies. I did that with all three of our children -- against the objections of my wife, particularly on the last two of our children. As I would come to learn, my wife lead the way in my family in spiritual insight and theological understanding. She was a Calvinist -- ah, er, ah, Reformed, before I adopted that viewpoint.

So I was a credo baptist when we moved to Georgia. Our pastor back in Colorado suggested we try a "Perimeter" Church. I had no idea that Perimeter churches were Presbyterian -- and that there were several kinds of Presbyterian denominations. When we came to our present church sixteen years ago, I discovered that Presbyterians believed in infant baptism -- and the thing that looked like a baptistery behind the pulpit and choir area was merely an air conditioning air flow return. It took a couple of years or searching the Scriptures and talking with others before I finally became convinced that the Bible taught that we should baptize our children. That is when our family joined the church and all our children were baptized.